Fragments of Noir

Sunday, 17 May 2026

But Never Quite

I see (Marlowe) always in a lonely street, in lonely rooms, puzzled but never quite defeated.

Raymond Chandler

Letter to Maurice Guinness

Feb 21st 1959

image
reblogged via
californiababylon.tumblr.com

Saturday, 16 May 2026

On Noir Set #55

Brighton Rock

Mystic River

Pickpocket

Killing of a Chinese Bookie

Scarlet Street

Carol

Fallen Idol

Chinatown

Bullitt

Jackie Brown

Tragedy of Macbeth

Dead Man Walking

On the Waterfront

The melody got lost, first off. Everything got lost, then, while that horn flew. It was only jazz ; it was the heart of jazz, and the insides, pulled out with the roots and held up for everybody to see ; it was the blues that told the story of all the lonely cats and all the ugly whores who ever lived ........

Charles Beaumont
Black Country
1954

image
Fats Navarro

Friday, 15 May 2026

More Elevator Shadows

The Grifters

Breaking Bad

Odds Against Tomorrow

Blade Runner

I Wake Up Screaming

Barton Fink

Elevator to the Gallows

Heat

Maltese Falcon

Matrix

Double Indemnity

Drive

The Big Clock

Better Call Saul

Angel Heart

Three Days of the Condor

Mad Men

Murder My Sweet

More John Baeder

John Baeder

Thursday, 14 May 2026

A Kind of Triangle

Ed Crane's Americanness runs through him like a stick of rock. He has hardly any dialogue, but dominates the movie through his rumbling, tenor voiceover ; he is indeed there but not there. This is a classic performance from Thornton, displaying the kind of maturity and technical mastery that we hardly dared hope for from this actor. His Ed Crane forms a kind of triangle with Henry Fonda in The Wrong Man and Gary Cooper in High Noon ; a paradigm of virile, yet faintly baffled American ordinariness.